Choosing the Right Homepage Metrics

What you're seeing above are the overall responses when 2,673 optimization experts were asked what key homepage metric they tested. The results, as you can see above, are fairly diverse. You can read the complete article here, but the key findings bring a fairly interesting question front and center - when it comes to KPIs, are you identifying and measuring the right metrics?

Interviewed in a previous post from MarketingSherpa, Boris Grinkot, Associate Director of Product Development for MECLABS and the author the Landing Page Optimization Benchmark Report, had this to say:

Boris Grinkot: Measurement on the homepage is complicated because so many things typically happen between it and the conversion step. The general point is that when looking at the funnel holistically, a test on the homepage can affect different metrics differently, and sometimes you can get contradictory results — bounce rate reduced = good, conversion rate reduced = bad.

The homepage as any entrance page acts as a filter, and changing it does not only linearly affect clickthroughs to the rest of the funnel, but can affect the quality of visitors that click through — in other words, the segments.

"Measurement on the homepage is complicated because so many things typically happen between it and the conversion step. The general point is that when looking at the funnel holistically, a test on the homepage can affect different metrics differently, and sometimes you can get contradictory results — bounce rate reduced = good, conversion rate reduced = bad.

The homepage as any entrance page acts as a filter, and changing it does not only linearly affect clickthroughs to the rest of the funnel, but can affect the quality of visitors that click through — in other words, the segments."

What do you think? When it comes to measuring the production of your homepage, are you looking for quality, quantity, or something else entirely?